To Love, Honour & Betray. Penny Jordan
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laughed at her indulgently at the time. He had felt very indulgent towards her in those days. Since his move to UCLA and his taking on full responsibility for their business there, he felt that he had become immeasurably more mature, a man of the world, whereas Margot was still very much a cherished and protected girl.
But then he had met Carole-Ann, and Margot’s suggestion had suddenly seemed to make good sense. There was a part of Lloyd that enjoyed playing the archetypal Bostonian gentleman’s role … of rescuing a woman in distress. And at first Margot had seemed pleased. It was only later, after he had proposed and Carole-Ann had accepted, that she had started asking questions, telephoning him at all hours of the day and night—a habit that she had continued even after he and Carole-Ann were married.
‘Look, I don’t give a shit if she disturbs your sleep,’ Carole-Ann had yelled at him once in the middle of a row, ‘but I won’t have the crazy bitch disturbing me, and waking up the kids.’
‘She loves me—’ Lloyd had started to protest.
But Carole-Ann had cut him short, telling him in angry disgust, ‘She’s mad, obsessed, possessed by what she feels for you, but as for love … I don’t think she’s capable of knowing what that means. If she really loved you, she’d want you to have a proper life of your own….’
That had been one of the worst summers, the worst years, of his life.
Six weeks after his return home from the island, he had received a hysterical telephone call from Margot.
‘But you can’t be pregnant,’ he had protested in shock, his hand tightening sweatily around the receiver, his heart pounding sickly and heavily.
‘I’m five weeks late,’ Margot had screamed. ‘Five weeks! Oh, God, Lloyd, what are we going to do?’
In the end, it had turned out to be a false alarm, but it had been after that that Margot had announced to him her decision to be sterilised.
‘Margot, no,’ he had protested instinctively, telling himself that the tight sensation he could feel in his throat was the anguish of his love for her rather than that of any psychological sense of a noose tightening around his neck. ‘You could meet someone else, marry, have children with him …’
‘No,’ she had howled, the sound a primal protest. ‘I shall never marry, never. The only man I want to marry is you, the only child I want is yours. You’re just saying that because you don’t love me any more,’ she had accused him. ‘You don’t care. You—’
‘Of course I love you,’ Lloyd had protested.
At the end of the year, Carole-Ann informed him that she was filing for divorce. She had met someone else, she told him, shrugging aside his shock.
He had kept in touch with the girls although he had said nothing to Margot about doing so. She had, after his divorce, begun cross-questioning him about the places he went and the people, the women, he met. His was a lonely life; he had friends, of course, but his relationship with Margot had to be kept a secret from them. She at least had her family, their family, around her.
He glanced at his watch. Two o’clock. His meeting with Dr Jamie Friedland was at two-fifteen. Danny, his assistant, had made all the arrangements. Since the professor was apparently still looking for an apartment, having spent his first term at UCLA in someone else’s spare room, it made sense for their meeting to take place at Lloyd’s apartment. Normally, he preferred to see potential authors away from his own home, but Danny had been so thoroughly excited about the professor’s manuscript that Lloyd hadn’t had the heart to remind him of that.
Certainly his work made very interesting reading—what Lloyd could understand of it, which wasn’t very much. But according to Danny, who could, it was a definitive work on its subject, breaking new ground and raising questions about established procedures other academics were going to find hard to answer.
Out of the corner of his eye, Lloyd saw a car turning into his driveway, a small European convertible sports model, driven by a redhead, her long hair mussed by the wind.
Frowning, Lloyd watched as she parked the car and got out. Tall and fashionably voluptuous, she moved with a confidence, an inherent liking of herself, that momentarily took his breath away. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen a woman so completely at peace with herself. She was, he decided, the complete antithesis of Margot. His frown deepened as he saw her look up at his window before heading for the entrance to his apartment. Ten seconds later as his intercom buzzed, he heard her announcing her arrival.
Dr Jamie Friedland to see Lloyd Kennet.
As he activated the automatic lock and let her in, Lloyd had the oddest sensation of being on the brink of something so fateful and portentous that for a moment, he almost felt half-afraid to meet her.
Irritably, he pushed it away. So he had made a mistake assuming that she was a man. Why should that matter?
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